Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
American writer and lecturer, Dale Carnegie is widely regarded as a pioneer of the self-improvement genre. A skilled orator right from the times when he was in high school, Carnegie worked as a travelling salesman to save up money and try his luck at acting. Upon finding that theatre life was not quite a perfect fit for him, he served in the army for a year. Eventually, he started teaching public speaking at the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), in New York. The classes were a great success, and later in order to deal with the growing number of students, he set up the Dale Carnegie Institute. Since no textbooks for teaching people skills existed at the time, he had to write them all himself. The most famous of these textbooks, How to Win Friends and Influence People, went on to become a bestseller. Some of his other celebrated books include How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) and Lincoln the Unknown (1932).